LETTER
TO V. V. VOROVSKY AND YA. A. BERZIN

We are all extremely pleased that you, Comrade Mehring, and
the other "Spartacist comrades" in Germany are "heart and soul
with us." This gives us confidence that the best elements of the
West-European working class, despite all difficulties, will come
to our aid.

We are passing through perhaps the most difficult weeks of the
entire revolution here. Class struggle and civil war have penetrated
deep into the population: everywhere in the villages there is a split —
the poor are with us, the kulaks rage furiously against us. The Entente
has bought the Czechs, a counter-revolutionary uprising rages, the
entire bourgeoisie exerts all efforts to topple us. Nevertheless, we firmly
believe that we shall avoid this "usual" course of revolution (as in 1794
and 1849) and defeat the bourgeoisie.

With great gratitude, warmest greetings,
and ardent respect,

Your Lenin.

P.S. My wife asks me to convey to you her special regards. To
Comrade Goshka (his speech, like your article, we have translated)
and to all, all our friends — warmest greetings.

P.S. I have just been brought the new state seal. Here is an imprint.
The inscription reads: Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic.
Proletarians of all countries, unite!

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LETTER TO V. V. VOROVSKY AND YA. A. BERZIN
20. IX. 1918.

Dear Comrades,

Today's "Pravda" carried excerpts from Kautsky's article against
Bolshevism (Soz[ialistische] Auslandspol[itik]). Kautsky's shameful
nonsense, childish prattle, and vulgarest opportunism raises the question:
why are we doing nothing to combat the theoretical vulgarization of
Marxism by Kautsky?

Can one tolerate that even such people as Mehring and Zetkin distance
themselves from Kautsky more amorally (if one may so express it) than
theoretically? Kautsky, for his part, has found nothing better to do than
write now against the Bolsheviks. Is that an argument? Can one so
weaken one's position? This means only placing weapons in Kautsky's hands.
Instead of this, one should write:

"Kautsky has absolutely failed to understand and has distorted, in
purely opportunistic fashion, Marx's teaching on the state
                                                  on the dictatorship of the proletariat
                                                  on bourgeois democracy
                                                  on parliamentarism
                                                  on the role and significance of the Commune, etc."

The following measures should be adopted:

1) Speak thoroughly with the Leftists (Spartacists, etc.), urging them
to come out in the press with a principled, theoretical statement that
on the question of the dictatorship Kautsky presents vulgar Bernsteinism,
not Marxism;

2) Publish as soon as possible my "The State and Revolution" in German;

3) Supply it at least with a publisher's preface in the manner of:
"The Publisher considers it especially urgent that this appear precisely
at the present moment, in view of the complete distortion of Marxism,
precisely on the given questions, in Kautsky's latest works, which
substitute the standpoint of the dictatorship of the proletariat with vulgar
social-liberalism in the spirit of Bernsteinism and other opportunists."

If it is not possible to publish a pamphlet quickly, then put a note in the
newspapers of the Left, similar to an "editor's preface."

I would very much ask you to send me (for my personal use) Kautsky's
pamphlet (on the Bolsheviks, the dictatorship, etc.) as soon as it appears.

Then collect for me all of Kautsky's articles on the Bolsheviks ("Democracy
and Dictatorship" late 1917 or early 1918; then articles from Soz[ialistische]
Auslandspol[itik] Aug[ust] 1918, and other articles, if there were any).

Warmest greetings.
Lenin.